Could the Boulton-Paul Defiant been more successful?

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The Defiant was less able than a Hurricane with or without a turret. Yes, it was superior to the Roc, but the best way for such aircraft would have been not to be. Boulton Paul built the Roc because Blackburn was busy building the Botha. It's hard to find a circumstance where the No Name Fighter might have entered the fray. Using my "scientific" method, I have determined that the F5/34 wing was thinner than the Hurri wing, of reasonable area, and provided endearing characteristics. The undercarriage was clumsy and intrusive of superb performance, but it was long enough to provide sufficient clearance for a larger propeller, as would be fitted to a more powerful engine, and, following the use on American naval fighters, an aid in glide bombing. An possible engine for the No Name has always been chosen from the ranks of the round engines, but none of Roy's Bristols quite hit the mark except perhaps the Hercules, heavy and slow in development, or Taurus, unreliable and underpowering. A natural fit is the P&W R-1830, of uncertain availability in the time frame, and with limited power capabilities for superior development. That leaves only an engine not round, and critically, under priority call to power Defiant, Battle, Henley, Whitley and more.

The No Name, we'll call it the Eastwood, was produced in quantity two, and the first, which provided the quoted speed numbers, had no armament. There's a considerable lack of details available, and I can't say with certainty if the second one had guns fitted, although it did have the gun tubes installed. Further military equipment was also omitted, without doubt, and the fuel volume was decidedly inadequate. Details for the possibility of fitting larger fuel volume are forever lacking. Still, it does look like a Zero, but has better ailerons, by Mr. Frise. Nobody who flew it had an unkind word. It's no Spitfire, but it's not chopped liver either. Yes, the wing spar runs one piece tip to tip, like Zero, but the Seafire wing fold wasn't located at a break in the spar. They made one. Like John Kennedy said, they could do it because it was hard.

Production wouldn't be a problem. There's a man with a factory looking for a contract, goes by the name of Folland.

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The Taurus engined version of your Gloster/Folland no name fighter was IIRC sketched with an extra fuel tank behind the cockpit to offset the weight of the Heavier engine in front of the CoG. Along with putting weight aft of CoG this would increase the airraft range, useful for an FAA aircraft. APNEP The single seat version of the Defiant ould have been a useful addition if production of either Hurriane or Spitfire had been interupted.
 
Given that the Defiant only used the 1,030 bhp early version of the Merlin engine, that doesn't surprise me. If the Defiant had the 1,565 bhp Merlin 61, the plane would definitely be fast enough to keep up with Ju 88A variants.
Given the limited supply of Merlins and applications such as the Spitfire, Lancaster and Mosquito, is this really where you want to direct a quantity of the latest Merlins?

By end 1940 there are few German bombers to shoot down.
 
The Taurus engined version of your Gloster/Folland no name fighter was IIRC sketched with an extra fuel tank behind the cockpit to offset the weight of the Heavier engine in front of the CoG. Along with putting weight aft of CoG this would increase the airraft range, useful for an FAA aircraft. APNEP The single seat version of the Defiant ould have been a useful addition if production of either Hurriane or Spitfire had been interupted.

There is precious little internal or structural information about Eastwood, such as where the original 68 gal. was kept. The long undercarriage and forward location of the wings would seem to indicate that a heavier engine was foreseen as a potential revision. The use of a fuselage tank behind the pilot is a distinct possibility, but the problem of employing it to adjust the CG is a bit problematic since tanks seem to find themselves emptying for part of every flight. The Martin Baker MB2 and Miles M.20 both offered performance equal to or better than Hurricane, with fixed undercarriage. The No Name/Merlin certainly would. The Defiant did not. It wasn't as fast and it wasn't as manoeuvrable, nor did it have notable range or climb. Of course, this is just in comparison to the Hurricane, an aircraft which became obsolete in the day fighter role by Nov 1940, with the advent of the Bf-109F. In comparison to Spitfire, well, it doesn't look so good. In retrospect, Hurricane production fared well, except for Machine Shop #7.
 
IIRC, The Miles M20 whilst aceptable as an imergencie production land fighter was found to have poor flight characteristics for a FAA aircraft. Performance is not everything, The early seafires lost so many aircraft to accidents that their operational effectiveness was compromised. IMHO any of the Three aircraft (Hurricane, Gloster F5/34 or single seat Defiant) built as a folding wing FAA fighter and avaiable prior to the DoW would have been a huge gain for the RN. Further this could have given time and inclination for a properly sorted Seafire to be fielded rather than a rather rushed conversion based on existing production airframes.
 
IIRC, The Miles M20 whilst aceptable as an imergencie production land fighter was found to have poor flight characteristics for a FAA aircraft. Performance is not everything, The early seafires lost so many aircraft to accidents that their operational effectiveness was compromised. IMHO any of the Three aircraft (Hurricane, Gloster F5/34 or single seat Defiant) built as a folding wing FAA fighter and avaiable prior to the DoW would have been a huge gain for the RN. Further this could have given time and inclination for a properly sorted Seafire to be fielded rather than a rather rushed conversion based on existing production airframes.

For the single seat naval fighter, a proper aircraft could have been spec'd, designed, tested and put in production, as a naval fighter. It wasn't. The Defiant wasn't in RAF service by DoW, so it seems unlikely that a naval variant would be in FAA Service in the same time frame. The Defiant was only dreamed of as a turret fighter and wouldn't have existed otherwise, and the only defense for its existence is that so many other aircraft were worse. A case could be made to develop the No Name instead of the Gladiator, with Perseus engine, and it would be in service in some quantity by DoW. I'm only saying that because it had a better wing than Hurricane, and flew and handled well. Given a Merlin, it could out-perform the Hurri in any aspect of performance just as the Hurri could out-perform the single-seat Defiant, in every aspect of performance. And I'm not a fan of Seafires, but performance is not everything, it is the only thing.
 

perfectgeneral

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During the Height of the Invasion scare of 1940 after the fall of France Bolton and Paul took the prototype Defiant sans turret and proposed to fit the wings with up to 12 303 calibre machine guns or 4 cannons as an replacement for Spitfires and Hurricanes if supplies of either aircraft were interrupted. Nothing came of this scheme, like the Miles M20 and the Miles Master fighter, these extemporised fighters were not in the end required.

Okay, even as a failed aircraft it could have been more successful, just make it so that the Defiant (or at least the carrier reworked version the P.85) wins the favour of the FAA rather the even worse Blackburn Roc, that's another 130-140 frames right there.

This is what I was hinting at. It would have been far better than some types accepted into the FAA

wikiP.85

The P.85 was Boulton Paul's tender to Specification O.30/35 for the naval turret fighter. A version of the Defiant for Fleet Air Arm (FAA); it had a deeper fuselage and leading edge slats for lower landing speeds required of carrier aircraft. The engine would be either a Bristol Hercules radial or the Merlin. Despite a higher estimated top speed, the Blackburn Roc was selected. With Blackburn already busy producing other projects, the detail design and production of the Roc was given to Boulton Paul.[8] The only FAA use of the Defiant was as the target tug version.
P.94

The first Defiant prototype had not been initially fitted with a turret and therefore had an impressive top speed. In 1940, Boulton Paul removed the turret from the prototype as a demonstrator for a fixed-gun fighter based on Defiant components. The armament offered was either 12 .303 in (7.7 mm) Browning machine guns (six per wing) or four 20 mm Hispano replacing eight of the Brownings. The guns could be depressed for ground attack. By that time, the RAF had sufficient quantities of Hawker Hurricanes and Supermarine Spitfire and did not require a new single-seat fighter. With a calculated top speed of about 360 mph (579 km/h) at 21,700 ft, the P.94 was almost as fast as a contemporary Spitfire although less manoeuvrable.
A much better FAA fighter seems possible if you take the P.85 and the P.94 as starting off points.

  1. Lose the turret
  2. Clip the wings (maybe) by two foot each*
  3. Add two 20mm cannon to each wing
  4. Additional cannon ammo instead of .303 in Browning MGs
  5. Ground attack gun angle good for anti-ship strafing
  6. Limited leading edge slats due to cannons
  7. Trailing edge flaps double as dive brakes
  8. longer body means more fuel/range
  9. Armour plate and radio behind pilot (centre of gravity fix)
  10. Armour plate behind rear fuel tank (centre of gravity fix)
Not much of a land based fighter, but the wheels are very widely spaced and the low speed landing handles well. A merlin powered cannon fighter calling out for an earlier RR Griffon engine.

Boulton Paul could have sold a few hundred of these to the FAA. Later marks would have thinner wings, but kept the low speed handling and wide wheel track that the Seafire lacked. At this point the wings need to bulge to fit the cannon. Not when first introduced like the Spitfire.

Thinner wings set a bit further back, a smoother revised airframe and the Griffon engine powering contra-props (to limit torque rotation) could have made this the best fighter of the war. It starts closer in shape to a Seafang than the Spitfire does.

Early cannon fighter to rival the Whirlwind in the BoB?
Escort fighter? How much more fuel than a Spitfire could this carry?

*This would make slow speed handling suffer, so maybe have retractable wing tips for combat? Less wing drag. Faster dives, rolls and turns. Variable wing geometry! Or the simpler, lower lift in flight version: bigger flaps, shorter wings.
 
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